For those decrying that radio is no longer the way it should be, what about establishing a new normal? I have, over the years, read post after post, that the new radio broadcast business, in a word, "sucks".
Some of us have even noticed that the radio business has given us a deaf ear to our concerns. We don't know what we are talking about, they say. And admittedly, they are correct. We don't live in a world that looks anything like 5 years ago. Part 15 looks remarkably different than ever before.
It came to my attention this last week, that there are some here on this forum who have little or no knowledge of social media. Yet, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube make up the bulk of worldwide communications. Just an example: Justin Beiber. Whether you like this youngsters music or not, he turned the music business on its ear, forever destroying the business model of the industry. You see, he gained number one playlist status without a record company contract, and without radio airplay. And he became a millionaire overnight because a viral video on YouTube. Radio jumped on the band wagon to meet the demand of it's listeners.
So, what are we willing to incorporate into our newly acquired bag of tricks to keep from being perceived as the one-trick-pony? And please notice, websites and e-mail aren't mentioned in the list of platforms promoting and extending new communication. We need to understand we are not radio stations, we are in the media business. More platforms equals more listeners. It has never been about the transmitter. It is about the people who consume what we produce and distribute. Radio is a distribution platform, and not much else.
Attention spans of media consumers has gone from minutes to seconds is the last few years. The current estimate is 9 seconds. If you don't get the listeners attention within nine seconds they are off to the next offering. And with all the platform-oriented media, there is a lot of other choices. The radio business still doesn't get it. Maybe some here will.
A recent article by Seth Godin pegs the problem. Here it is for your reading:
We discuss our technical delivery systems at length. We discover and learn what others have already learned and argue the arguments of days gone by. In this, there is very little that is new. I suppose the question becomes, where does this practice take us. I am not bored with teaching what I know. However, I am excited and enthused to learn what I don't know and will move my love of "media" forward. Maybe its time to define the difference between "technician" and "innovator", "practitioner" and "inventor".
I challenge you to learn to use a new platform in the next month and begin using it for your love of radio and media. I have already accepted the challenge from my kids and discovered there is a brave new world out there for the taking. How are you connecting with your new fans?
Absolutely, Marshall, we are members of a very different world which is very much in state of everyday change. What is "normal" is changing, and we are not at all close to a time when it all stands still for awhile.
Your commentary made me think of "social media" as we knew it in the 60s and 70s on AM & FM: the telephone. Once we opened the "request line" whole new branches of the human family opened up as many of us began socializing with listeners, for better or worse.
Each part 15 operator will probably develop a different "normal" based on their own creative evolution.
Let's see, what normal thing should we do today?
From my perspective, part of the problem is how big business has tied our hands with licensing fees.
I have a website for my station. I have a webcast for my station. I have a MySpace page. But, until I can afford an operating budget for licensing, I have to restrict my playlist to Talk Radio and Indie music, license free, since it goes onto the Internet.
There's a glut of free Indie material out there. Some really good, some really bad. Given the time, one could weed through it all and put together great programming without licensing.
Problem is, those 9 seconds you have to win them over requires something they were looking for. Has anyone tried running all Indie programming and if so, how's that workin' for you?
Maybe if I was a radio only operation I wouldn't worry about adding commercial music. With limited coverage, the odds of someone from BMI, SESAC, ASCAP, etc. hearing it is slim.
Maybe I'm just lazy (or cheap) but I'm in this more for the love of tinkering with radio. I'm my best listener. Am I still a broadcaster? Maybe a Closet Broadcaster...
Good point, MRAM. Getting entirely spread onto all the mediums (MEDIA) requires expense of not only fees, but huge management time, where much of the fun of running a communications enterprise becomes too time consuming.
I know there are many platforms, but no one yet has responded to my often asked question of .... what are they? I have no clue how a radio station could employ facebook, twitter, linked in, androids, ustream or youtube.
It seems to me these are such different styles of medium their purpose has little to do with radio. If you put yourself on camera you've got to have props and wear good clothes and the hardest part is to keep from being boring, because the eye becomes distracted quicker than the ear. If you send messages back and forth with strangers they aren't listening to the stream because they are distracted writing notes to strangers. So far as I can tell, doing all this stuff leads to chaos and disorder, but maybe someone will explain it to me in a way I can grasp.
In the radio program THIS WEEK IN RADIO TECH one of the engineers said that radio stations need to think about having video.
I think there's an assumption that doing all this stuff keeps the audience interested, but perhaps that is a myth.
Still, I agree with Marshall's premiss of a NEW NORMAL. And he put it right... we need to MAKE a new normal. It's not something already in place.
I'm sitting at my main console in Surina Business Park here in Friday Harbor, WA. I have 3 modems, 2 are always on, the third is for remote broadcasting and remote control of the main studio computer, which I can do from anywhere there is CLEAR 4G or Sprint 3G service. The other computer on full time in the studio is one to which I can at anytime transfer the broadcast and playlists while I use this one for editing music, interviews, digitizing analog media, etc.
We are on 24/7/365. Check the schedule ... almost all is local stuff. I do live announcements and ferry reports (average 15 min before arrivals) with the main 'Local Music' playlist running. I update my web page 5-6 times daily, run NOAA weather overnight (I drive a taxi night shift 4:00pm-2:00am). Sometimes I do those live things remotely from the netbook.
Also on FB and Twitter which I update daily. I always publish the website, and sometimes the direct SHOUTcast link if it's an un-advertised live thing that happened quickly ... like the community meeting with the state board of corrections about a level 3 sex offender who requested (and was denied) to live on the island.
Oddly, most listeners are tuning in on car radios in town at this time ... but I expect that to change.
The main problem for me is that everyone thinks I should give them free airtime, slaving over a hot console, updating pages, recording, and broadcasting remotes, should all be free. Maybe they're right, but I can't afford it much longer.
I agree with you kk7cw. I am 15 years old and I am on Facebook, Youtube, Stickam, Justin.tv, Ustream, Xbox Live, ect. The new normal now is social network. Almost every radio station in my area every the oldies station are all on social networks. We need to expand our part 15 station and join the social network sites. If your station plays all non copyright content then join stickam, ustream.tv and justin.tv and rebroadcast your station on it. Join Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. One time I went and looked at one of the oldies station in my area Facebook page. Don't laugh they had fans how were elderly on there Facebook page. I own an internet radio station and it is on all of the social networking sites. Some of my new listeners found my station because there friend liked it. So what I am saying is social is good for your station and will get you more listeners too.
How can a radio station be put on a video channel? Doesn't that make it television? What do you use for picture?
You can use a lot of things. I have seen stations that have there logo, a live studio cam, and I have seen stations that just put nothing and just have audio.
I just read the description of Facebook at Wikipedia. It didn't appeal to me at all as a medium, except for groups, like little neighborhood enclaves that shut out the rest of the world. Facebook only accepts actual personal names, which does away with identity security, and excludes people with radio names and excludes radio station names, and the Facebook world is 600-million people? How would they even find one small radio station in that ocean of prospects? It looks like a mass distraction, a high tech phone book, yet another place to be lost in cyber space.
But I'll keep listening to stories from experience as I try to understand these diverse media.
Thank you for the input.
Yes if you want to make a group or fan page you need a Facebook account. However, you can have you account not be in the Facebook directory so no one can find you. A fan page is what a radio station would use. They even have radio station for a category. I don't recommend using a group for your radio station. People can find your station by searching for it on Facebook. They also have badges you can put on your site.
I found Facebook to be to invasive.
I set up an account at the urging of a friend. I put the regular stuff on the page.
Soon after I started receiving all kinds of spam and invites from people that couldn't really have a good reason to "like" me.
Then, someone put an image on my "Wall" that lots of people found offensive. I got all kinds of hate mail for something I didn't even know about.
I dumped my account.
Be careful. You can set it up so no one can post stuff on your wall. You have to make sure what your settings are set to.
Well, I don't need a social service for which I have to isolate myself from my "friends".
Anyway, I don't have the time to check all these different social outlets. I have a life off-line.
Well, there you are. MRAM just said it. One's off-line life gets used up by the increased management problems associated with these various flavors of media.
BUT, I still keep an open mind (opened by Marsh with the title "New Normal") that perhaps there are opportunities ahead with these systems.
I would argue that having ongoing threads about the upsides and downsides of each new platform should be regular features on this website.
Rather than "trying" any of this stuff, I want to continue hearing about it, and so request clear descriptions of experience, as have already started to be posted.
Not "brave new world." No. It's a "Timid New World."
In reading the broadcasting trades, I have noticed that comments are wide ranging on social media platforms. The comments posted here are oddly the same as those in the trade publications. The comments posted here are very much appreciated and at the same time expected. There is an odd division of opinion, probably indicated by the general age group of the writer.
In the early 1900's, people considered the airplane and radio as fanciful toy-like inventions of non-productive people. Folks just couldn't understand why we needed radio. We had perfectly good newspapers. All those batteries and wires and tubes and such. They thought it confusing and unnecessary. The airplane would never be of any practical use. It was being forwarded by a couple of North Carolina guys from a not so successful bicycle shop. Both inventions received a grunt and a wink.
In the 1940's, television was coming to the forefront. Similar comments were made concerning the need for pictures on the radio. But, without it we would not have experienced man stepping onto the moon decades later, or watched the Twin Towers in New York collapse into a heap of rubble. Radio, television and the airplane are indispensable parts of our lives these days.
As humans, we tend to criticize what we don't understand or find that exist outside our personal realm of influence or thought. I have only suggested the investigation of the possibilities presented by social media. It won't fit every scenario, maybe not yours.
And, can someone explain to me the problem with the addition of 50 new raving fans of your radio station each month by whatever means? Or, maybe just 10 new fans. Who cares how many out of a half million find you? You can't swallow a whole elephant in one bite anyway. Some of us are prone to looking the proverbial gift-horse in the mouth.
All the anecdotal experience and stories, I have read here, have not dissuaded me to continue my quest to find more; more ways to distribute what I produce, more and more convenient ways for listeners to find me. If you are satisfied that you are your only raving fan, then you have grown large enough. If not, I am suggesting a look at all the platforms mentioned here. Find one or two that you can do and stick with it until you determine the real outcome. To criticize out of hand indicates that there are other challenges to overcome before looking for more listeners.
As a final thought; when anything in this world stops growing, it begins to die. It won't be long before others dig the hole to bury it in...that is if they even give a rip about it in the first place.
Part 15 radio does not limit anyone's imagination, nor should it stunt creative thought. The rules give us "lines" inside which we can make any color or hue. A train would seem strange with only the locomotive. It's when we hook the other cars to the engine we find a productive use for the invention. Maybe low power radio is the same way.